I have been begging for the warm days so I can wear dresses 24/7 and now that they are here to stay I cannot get enough of this shirt dress. If you follow me on instagram, you probably know or have seen that I’ve been wearing it non-stop but I just can’t help it. The colors and the fit are too good not to. Call me obsessed, it’s ok. What I’m really excited to share with y’all today is a fun announcement and a topic I haven’t shared much about on the blog. Scroll down to read more and learn why I started blogging in the first place.

As with any good tale, I will start from the beginning. When I was in high school, I had my sights set on this idea of a pair of earrings I wanted to wear to a school function. I hadn’t seen them anywhere nor did I know if they even existed. I just knew this dream pair was the pair I needed to complete my outfit. Being the stubborn and persistent person that I am, I began my search and shopped my heart out. I was running out of time and hadn’t found anything close to the perfect pair I dreamed up. One evening, I was strolling through a local craft store with my mom when I ended up on the bead aisle. A lightbulb went off and that’s when I realized I could just make the dream pair myself! I bought the beads and tools and got to work. Looking back, the design was minimal and the quality was far from par, but for a self taught beginner, they satisfied the need and gave me a creative outlet.

I kept designing, practicing and making until I had perfected several skills in jewelry making. I opened an Etsy and started selling pieces to juniors and seniors going to prom. I did countless shows and vendor fairs to get my name and jewelry out there and eventually styled my first look book to share with stores. As blogging continued to grow, I decided to add the blog feature to my jewelry site as another way to style and sell it. Before I knew it, blog traffic and inquiries outnumbered jewelry sales and it didn’t take long for the jewelry making to slow and eventually become little more than a hobby I played with when I had some spare time. Well, we all know how that goes…

A few months ago I left my corporate job and suddenly had more of that free time and less stress. I got the itch to start creating again and started designing a few basic styles that could be done in a variety of colors. I gave this site a much needed refresh, took the jewelry pages off the menu and re-opened my Etsy site. It feels good to be back on the creative side of life. I have always said that if blogging and jewelry never turn into anything more than hobbies, I’m ok with it as long as I am having fun – and I definitely am! I’m not perfect and some days I would rather sleep in than get up an shoot, or the rain totally throws off my perfectly laid out schedule and I’m a sitting duck. I treat both like businesses but try not to let myself get too stressed out over either or take myself too seriously. The day this look was shot I was sure I had everything planned out to the detail. This was the final look (of 10 shot that morning) and I had an event to go to that afternoon. My photographer tried to tell me my earrings didn’t match but my mind was elsewhere and I totally missed it. She thought I did it on purpose so she didn’t say anything else about it. I didn’t realize it until I got the images back from her and just laughed. It wasn’t planned, but it totally worked.

I hope y’all have a great Friday Jr & stay dry if you’re in the middle of all this rain like me!

XO

dress // circle bag // slides // shades // hoop earrings ( green & champagne)

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